The Case of the Buried Clock

Chapter 18

Developments in the Hardisty murder case moved today with bewildering rapidity.

A person who is in close touch with the situation, but who wishes his name withheld, stated positively that Jack Hardisty had in his possession, at the time of his death, a large sum of money. There is a rumor that this money may have been removed from a Roxbury bank, where Hardisty had been employed up to the time of his death.

The sheriff’s office, making a search of the Hardisty residence, was confronted with an antique locked desk. Because this was valuable as an antique Vincent P. Blane, the father-in-law of the victim, insisted that the lock should not be forced, but that officers should get a key either from Mrs. Hardisty or from Adele Blane. An attempt was made to secure a passkey, but because the antique writing desk had been recently fitted with a most modem lock, all efforts to open it in the usual routine manner proved futile.

Placing George Crane, a deputy constable and merchant patrol of Roxbury, in charge, police started trying to locate a key which would fit the lock. Mrs. Hardisty, who has steadfastly refused to make any statement concerning the case, finally consented to permit the authorities to use her key in opening the desk.

Shortly before nine o’clock, however, the telephone at police headquarters in Roxbury rang insistently. The voice of a man whom the police have not as yet been able to identify, advised them that he had heard the sound of a revolver shot at the Hardisty residence. Officers Frank Marigold and Jim Spencer, making a quick run to the scene, found George Crane unconscious from a blow with a blackjack administered a few minutes earlier by some unidentified woman at whom Crane had taken a shot, and whom he may have wounded. It was reported that Mrs. Hardisty’s lawyer and private detective were also on the premises at the time. They were permitted to leave the premises without being searched. The writing desk had been forced open, and papers lay in a litter of confusion over the floor (see photograph on page three).

Coincident with this development, police have found evidence which definitely establishes the place where the crime was committed. Near a granite rock, some seventy-five yards from the Blane cabin where Hardisty’s body was found, police found the broken fragment of a spectacle lens. A test by competent experts shows that was a fragment from Jack Hardisty’s glasses — glasses which incidentally were not found on the body of the dead man.

In the face of this information, the district attorney of Kern County has stepped to one side, and jurisdiction will be held in Los Angeles County...